


with the beast inside

by callmetash



Series: there's a ghost upon the moor tonight (now it's in our house) [1]
Category: Falling Skies
Genre: F/M, Gen, Set between Seasons 3 and 4, mentions of Bugged!Hades, they always needed to have this talk in canon and they never did so i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 16:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9394613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmetash/pseuds/callmetash
Summary: Lourdes may be free from the bugs, but it doesn't mean she can escape what the Mole has done. Hal might have some answers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys i'm back again!!! hopefully someone out there is reading this!!
> 
> this was part of my Big Giant Fic i decided was better if it was separated. basically i always wanted this conversation to happen in canon because i thought it made sense that hal would've bugged lourdes if he was already bugged.... but it never happened before lourdes was killed off so i always wanted it to be addressed. and this is what this is!! it's not very shippy, but hopefully that makes it more palatable for people who aren't into hal/lourdes??? so i hope you guys enjoy :)

Lexi is able to remove the eye worms from Lourdes’ skull, but she is not able to remove the distrust from the other members of the 2nd Mass. In fact, despite being debugged, Lourdes remains locked in the cage they placed her in for a few more hours before they yank her out and tell her to shower. She does, and she’s slow—her mind is so confused, and her muscles are so tired from all the convulsing she’s done—and they yell at her to hurry up, you’re keeping everyone waiting! And she wears the same dirty clothes from before because they don’t have anything left. 

“Now that you’re fine,” someone says, “We don’t need to carry you around.”

Lourdes almost falls asleep on her feet that night. She doesn’t know where they are, or where Lexi is—she wants to say thank you. Someone pushes her every time she almost dozes off and collapses on the spot, and someone passes her off to Anthony when they’re annoyed with her. 

“She keeps falling asleep on her feet. Keep her moving.” 

Anthony nods, and Lourdes mumbles a small “Sorry, I’m tired,” under her breath.

“Shut up, Mole,” the person spits and walks off, and Lourdes flinches at the venom in his voice. 

Lourdes has never really quite fit in anywhere, even in the 2nd Mass, but she’s never been bullied or hated that badly before. If she wasn’t so exhausted, she probably would be crying. 

“Come on, Lourdes,” Anthony says. He puts a hesitant hand on her back, and Lourdes continues walking. She appreciates that Anthony is being gentle, but he doesn’t look at her the whole time she’s with him. He’s scared of her, she realises, and she wants to say something, anything, that will make this better, but she can’t. She doesn’t know what to say. Her mind is still in a haze—she knows there were bad things, but all she can remember is the agony, the fear, and Hal’s concerned face, telling her he’d get the bugs out of her. She doesn’t remember much else. 

Over the twenty-two days it takes to make their way back to Charleston, Lourdes begins to remember. 

The first night after the bugs are removed, she sleeps soundly. She sleeps less each night she gets closer to Charleston. Manchester and Hathaway come to mind, and on the first few nights, she remembers killing them. It’s harder the next week when she starts watching herself methodically planning a murder. With each night, the vague dreams become more clear, and Lourdes is watching someone who looks exactly like her, doing things she remembers, but had no control over. It’s terrifying, and every time she wakes up, she bites down on her lip so hard she tastes copper and then runs to an open area as her stomach churns violently.

Seventeen days after she’s debugged, she learns Hal is the one who bugged her. She dreams about him kissing her, and has a thought that comes with the eye worm he gave her—Karen had infected him the same way, kissing him to infect him. It takes root inside her much more quickly than it does Hal—it lies dormant in Hal, or maybe he fought it. She wouldn’t put it past him; he was so much stronger than she was. Lourdes had been so ruined by Jamil’s death that maybe she invited the aliens into her body.

They plan things together; Hal steals things for her in the dead of night, tries to collect intel from Maggie, who is going on missions while the regular Hal is stuck in a wheelchair. Lourdes uses her position as a doctor to her advantage; as Anne’s pregnancy continues, Lourdes steps up into a more senior position, rubbing elbows with Charleston’s important figures. She delivers Lexi—and then she takes her blood, and gives it to Hal to give it to Karen. He returns a vial a week later, that Lourdes gives to the newborn as “immunity shots”. Lexi begins to develop rapidly—and she knows this because she did it—and Anne becomes paranoid. For the Lourdes in her dream, it’s a good thing. For the Lourdes watching on, the real Lourdes, she’s horrified.

(One night, Lourdes makes Hal visit her, nursing a glass of whisky.

“She’s getting ready to run,” Lourdes says calmly, offering Hal a drink. She pours him one when he only smirks in response. “You need to meet with Karen and make sure she has my vials—Lexi won’t be ready for the donor DNA if she’s not prepped correctly.” 

Hal takes a sip of his whisky and waves his hand at her. “It’ll be done. And if not—I’ll inject Lexi myself.”

“You’ll be taking her, won’t you?”

Hal nods. “That’s been my job, from the start—get the Mason baby to Karen.” He smiles. “She’s going to do some incredible things.”

“And then, I’ll bomb Charleston,” Lourdes says with a nod. “Destroy them from within.” 

Hal nods and raises his glass. “That’s right.”)

She goes to Hal the next day. Lourdes wants more than anything for these dreams to not be true—but when she finally catches Hal alone, the look on his face is clear: she’s not making these up. The visions are real. 

“You’re starting to see them too,” he says. 

“We did that,” she says, “To Lexi and Anne?”

Hal shakes his head. “Not us,” he argues. “The worms. The Espheni. They used us.” 

“So it was still us.” 

“Our bodies—but not us. Not consciously. That was all them.” 

Lourdes looks at him. “Did anyone put you in a cage when they found you were bugged?” She asks. 

Hal scrunches up his face for a moment and adjusts his gun. “They strapped me to a gurney.” 

“Did they keep you tied up after you were… debugged?”

“No,” he says, frowning. He puts a hand on her shoulder. “Lourdes—has someone done that to you? If you have, tell me, and I’ll tell them to back off—”

“Not anymore,” Lourdes says, with a shrug, trying not to let it get to her (she—or her body, at least—deserves the treatment). “They trust me enough to not kill Anthony. I think that’s all they trust me to do, though.” 

Hal moves his hand in front of her, stopping her from moving. “You’d tell me if they’re treating you badly, right?” He says, staring at her. “Because you don’t deserve that. You’re not responsible, Lourdes, and people need to understand that.” 

“But they think I’m responsible,” Lourdes argues. “They think I’m weak and I couldn’t fight it off like you—and they think I’m responsible for everything. Anne won’t even let me see Lexi to say thank you. And you’re the one who took them to Karen!” 

Hal goes pale, jaw clenching as they hear Lourdes’ unspoken words: _You did this to me. Karen did this to me. But now I have to deal with the blame, while you get away with it?_

“Hal,” Lourdes says, watching his face. He’s trying to suppress the guilt there, because surely he’s known this fact longer than she has, and had to deal with it. “Hal, I’m sorry—”

“If everything had come back to me sooner,” Hal says, “I promise you, Lourdes, I would’ve stopped you from doing what you did. And I would’ve told them to debug you too. But it was only after we were bombed and you were caught that they all came back—I’m the one whose sorry, Lourdes. I’m sorry you had to deal with all this.” 

Lourdes stares at him, his face as earnest as always, and she tries to suppress a sob. She wishes that Hal wasn’t too late and that he’d saved her—or whatever had been left of her while the eye worms had taken control—from becoming a monster. But it’s too late now. If there’s one thing the invasion has taught her, there’s no good in dwelling in the past. Moving forward is the only option. “I know,” she says. “I trust you.” 

She remembers the talk they had in the tent, and she sees Hal’s face light up with recognition. “It means a lot to me that you trust me, Lourdes,” he says quietly. “You know I trust you, too.” 

They walk for a period of time in silence, a little way away from the rest of the group. Maggie and Ben walk together for a moment, doing patrol; Lourdes feels their eyes on them, inquisitive. Hal looks at them, but Lourdes keeps her head down. She heard Maggie talking about her—thinking that it would be best if Lourdes had died with the bugs in her. She knows Maggie had meant to end her suffering, but it’s still hard to look at her after that. 

“Can you answer a question for me?” Lourdes asks after a little while. “Truthfully.” 

Hal glances over at her. “I’ll do my best. No promises, Delgado.” 

“When do you think they might forgive me for what I’ve done?”

It’s a loaded question, and Lourdes knows it. They’d forgiven Hal right away for having his mind invaded, but it had been weeks now, and people were scared to touch her, as if they were afraid she was going to give them eye worms. It’s the question that plagues her the most, the thought that gives her pause and brings about a new wave of fear every time she thinks about it: if the 2nd Mass, her family, don’t forgive her, where does she go from there?

Hal mulls it over for a moment before he answers. “Eventually,” he says. “I can’t say when. You know they can be closed minded when they want to be.” 

“But when’s eventually, Hal?” She asks, desperate for an answer she knows he can’t provide, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “Is it just as far away as someday?”

There’s something in Hal’s expression for a moment that Lourdes doesn’t recognise. It’s gone in an instant, and he sighs, putting a hand back onto her shoulder. “I don’t know,” he says, weary. “I just know it’s coming.”

**Author's Note:**

> pls leave feedback i need it to live!!!!


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